Gone

I got an email from their support team this evening in response to my request to have my details removed in order to protect my privacy. I’ve now visited the site and tried to sign in using my old account details and was pleased to note that I couldn’t. I also didn’t get the stuff about a reactivation request which I was presented with previously. So that should be that!

If it helps anyone else who is trying to leave Facebook then I think expressing a concern about the privacy of your data is most likely to get a semi-rapid, favourable response. It may help the process if you make sure you have jumped through the hoop of removing applications, contacts and so on before sending the email.

What it clearly demonstrates is that they have the ability to remove your details so there isn’t really any need for them to hang on to them. With this in mind, I can’t think of any reason why they don’t just replace their deactivation policy with a genuine deletion policy!